A functional analysis of political advertising across media, 1998

Abstract

This study applied the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to 118 political advertisements (television spots, newspaper ads, direct mail, and WWW pages) from 1998. Acclaims (self‐praise; positive statements) were the most common function (84%), followed by attacks (criticism, negative statements; 15%). Defenses (refutation of attacks) were relatively infrequent (1%). There were some differences by medium (WWW pages had the most acclaims, while television spots had the most attacks; no defenses occurred on WWW pages or in direct mail) but these functions are consistent both across media and with prior research on presidential campaign advertising. Incumbents produced more acclaims than challengers, who attacked more than incumbents. Finally, policy utterances were more common than character utterances in all media but www pages. The overall consistency in Junctions and topics across media and across levels of campaigns (presidential and non‐presidential) strongly suggests the existence of important situational influences on political campaign advertising. These findings can be useful for practitioners, theorists, and critics of campaign discourse.

Key terms:

• Political Advertising
• TV Spots
• Newspaper Ads
• Direct Mail
• Webpages
• Functional Theory
• Acclaims
• Attacks
• Defenses
• Policy
• Character